I have a friend who uses my strength like a service and calls it closeness

Dear Delyara, I have been there for her through breakups, family issues, panic, self-doubt, money problems, and all the dramatic returning storms of her life. I listened, soothed, replied, stayed kind, stayed available, stayed thoughtful, and for a long time I told myself that was what deep friendship looked like. Lately, I’m seeing the emptiness inside that arrangement. She knows I will pick up. She knows I will absorb. She knows I will make emotional sense of things for her when she cannot. What she does not know well enough is me. My shame. My private fear. The things I don’t say because I no longer trust the friendship to hold me as carefully as it has learned to let me hold her. I think I became useful before I became known. And now I don’t know how to reverse that without sounding cruel.